Word: baxter
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...department is shifting course on other important fronts. William Baxter, chief of the department's antitrust division, will ease the regulations on corporate mergers, and announced that only those couplings that hit the consumer with higher prices will be challenged. Smith is also seeking to trim the Freedom of Information Act and repeal the Ethics in Government Act's requirement that a special prosecutor be named when a high federal official is suspected of a crime. Moreover, the Attorney General last week abolished a set of guidelines adopted by the Carter Administration to limit Government lawsuits against "whistleblowers...
...great unknown remaining after the fight for Conoco is the Justice Department's attitude toward a merger between two oil companies. Two weeks ago, Antitrust Chief William Baxter gave the green light to a Du Pont-Conoco deal. Yet, despite heavy pressure from Mobil, he did not express an opinion on a Mobil-Conoco merger. In fact, he appeared to be indicating that he might block it, when he said: "If they think we're generally soft on mergers, they're going to be in for a big surprise." If Mobil, Texaco or another member...
...Baxter openly accepts some responsibility for the merger phenomenon. Said he last week: "The statements we've made at the Justice Department have allowed people to think about mergers that they really wouldn't have thought about in past Administrations." Mobil's bid for Conoco is a case in point. Such a merger between two of the top ten petroleum companies would never have been seriously considered during Jimmy Carter's term. Baxter insists that his trustbusters will not allow any acquisition that significantly reduces competition within the oil industry or any other. He also maintains...
...Baxter should be wary, if only because the American public has long been apprehensive about excessive corporate power. He admits, "The strains of populist hostility toward large companies are deeply ingrained in the U.S." Government trustbusters have enjoyed broad public support as they attacked both concentration within an industry and combinations between corporate giants in unrelated businesses. Yet the burgeoning growth of corporate America has outpaced all the antitrust efforts. Since World War II, the portion of U.S. industry controlled by the 200 largest manufacturing firms has risen from...
...rush to pass such an arbitrary limit on merger size could be a serious mistake. Says Justice's Baxter: "Mergers are a very important part of the functioning of capital markets, and one has to be very careful about a simplistic and sweeping reaction to merger surges...